


And they lived happily ever after

by thefictionaleconomist



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: F/M, Future Fic, Light Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-12
Updated: 2016-07-12
Packaged: 2018-07-23 14:43:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7467330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thefictionaleconomist/pseuds/thefictionaleconomist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If you had asked Vox Machina who they thought would be the first to go, most would probably guess Vax.</p><p>They would all be wrong. </p><p>For who could have thought, all those years ago, when death was something that hung around the corner on every journey, that it wasn’t their adventures that would kill them. When you’re young and surrounded by battle, old age seems like an unlikely future.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And they lived happily ever after

If you had asked Vox Machina— perhaps on a night everyone has settled into that melancholy half-drunk state which makes one think of life, death, and everything in between—who they thought would be the first to go, most would probably guess Vax (Cause of death: blaze of glory. Failure to use Jenga protocols.) Some might guess Grog (Cause of death: bar fight with the wrong orc.) Scanlan would turn it into a joke, slapping five gold on the table and saying, “My money’s on Vax. First to go, called it, you all owe me money at the funeral.”

  
They would all be wrong.

  
Or rather, one of them was right, though he would have refused to place a bet on his own demise. But even he was wrong about the how and the when, for his musings on the subject tended towards self-destruction, coupled with the possibility of blowing up the world around himself. For who could have thought, all those years ago, when death was something that hung around the corner on every journey, that it wasn’t their adventures that would kill them. When you’re young and surrounded by battle, old age seems like an unlikely future.

  
\--

  
The air is colder than she remembers. Even bundled up in furs, the wind is biting into her skin and a numbness settles into her toes as she climbs the steps up to the walls of the castle. The climb is also longer than she remembers, though that may be because she was a good sixty years younger the last time she was here. Half-elf she may be, but even half elfs can get creaks in their knees and it’s a slow walk to look over the battlements at the city of Whitestone, resplendent even beneath the masts of black hung to honor their recently fallen lord.

  
Vexah’lia lets a sigh escape, a trickle of white air drifting away as she scans the city, looking for something that feels familiar. The last time she was here, it was still a fledgling mountain city coming out from years of evil seeping into its very roots. It must have been ten years, maybe fifteen after they had freed the city– Gods, she really was getting old if she couldn’t remember exactly when – and some years after Vox Machina had parted ways that a trip had brought her and her brother up north. The visit had been awkward and rushed, the way visits with old friends can be when all that’s left is memories and cards sent at Winter Festival. He was still Percy though, with scorch marks up his sleeve and that glint behind his glasses that suggested nothing he was planning was good, but that it damn well would work.

  
And then, well, then life happened, she supposes. Years go by and you realize that time has swept you past the people who once populated your every day. Until one day you get a crisp piece of parchment announcing the death of Lord Percival Fredrickstein Von Musel Klossowski de Rolo III with a funeral date in stark black print.

  
“The Sun Tree looks so much better.”

  
She startles and blinks at the half-elven druid woman who has come to stand beside her, before breaking into a wide smile and pulling her into a hug.”Keyleth. Darling. You came.”

  
“How could I not?” Keyleth’s smile fades as she pulls away, her eyes shuttering as the reason for their reunion comes skittering back between them. “We’re all here. It’s a miracle,” Keyleth continues, fighting to keep her voice light. “Vox Machina all in one place. Only happens once a half-century, they say.”

  
“Yes, well…” Vex pauses and cocks her head, gauging the mood of the women who looked so much more composed, more regal than the last time they met. “You know even better than I, darling, that people had kingdoms to rule, cities to run, families to return to. We couldn’t run away from life forever.” (Or at least that what she tells herself. Anyone who knows Vex knows that, of her many talents, shrugging off guilt and pretending she doesn’t mind what’s been left behind are definitely in the top ten.)

  
Keyleth has the decency to blush, the color in her cheeks making her look younger, more like the confused druid Vex’ahlia remembered than the woman who stood before her. “That didn’t mean we had to scatter to the corners of the earth. Even if I technically did, did have to go to the very corner of the earth. Because that’s where my people are. And I have to be there, have to …” She trails off, her voice pitching upwards as she gets to the end and then dying off.

  
“I know, dear.” They lapse into silence, shivering against the cold air.

  
“He lived a long life -- one-hundred and two, that’s longer than most humans. Certainly longer than anyone with his … explosive habits could be expected to.”

  
“Not as long as us.” Vex’s mouth twists, a memory coming unbidden of the last time she saw Percy. A diplomatic dinner in Tal Dor’ei , seeking him out across the room to find an old man she barely recognized. Hair still white, but face lined and eyes cloudy behind thick glasses. His smile when she approached was the same though. Vex hadn’t been sure if that made it better or worse. “I didn’t think we’d ever see each other grow old. Or how soon it would come.”

  
“None of us did. Do you know the amount of time I spent worrying that each day was the day one of us was lost? Worrying that everything I did would be for nothing, that I’d die at the claw of a dragon before I ever finished my journey? Before I ever figured out what I could be for my people? Or that Vax would jump off a cliff someday before we—”

  
Vex laughs and places a hand on Keyleth’s shoulder. “But he didn’t. And you did figure it out. More than I ever did, anyway. Look at you.” She stepped back, sweeping her gaze over Keyleth’s regal attire. “When did our awkward druid become a queen?”

  
Keyleth fidgets, turning away from Vex’s searching eyes to look back over the city. “There are days I don’t think she has. I keep waiting for someone to figure out it’s all a sham, that I don’t really know what I’m doing. I still feel so young, so inexperienced.”

  
“Don’t we all,” Vex murmurs, letting her eyes follow Keyleth’s as she scans the city, searching for something. Vex sees that something, that someone, before Keyleth, though she doesn’t say a word as she watches the black hooded figure dip through the streets. Her brother had always been good at hiding, even when he didn’t know that someone was looking for him. She had always been good at finding him anyway. After a moment – “He’s looking forward to seeing you.”

  
The other woman starts, glancing back over to Vex with a look of something perhaps akin to panic, but closer to hope; Vex continues, “Not that he’d say as much. He’d still prefer to pull my braid and walk away in a swirl of his cloak than discuss anything of the sort with me. But he spent the whole trip up here skulking about as if he had just rediscovered his brooding twenty-year-old phase. Which was unpleasant enough when we were young, but thoroughly insufferable now that we’re older.”

  
Vex looks slyly over at Keyleth, rigid beside her, fingers clenching the stone work. “He still won’t say anything about those days. Why you stepped aside, went separate ways. I teased him for ages to make him tell me.”

  
Keyleth opens her mouth as if to say something and closes it again. Turns away, turns back, and then says haltingly, “I wasn’t… We left it … I mean.” She stops and says all in a rush, “It had to end. We both agreed, it wasn’t... Neither of us really knew who we were when we weren’t travelling, weren’t fighting. We had to figure that out. It was fine. We were fine. Happy, even. For what we had had. What we could continue to be apart.”

  
“I figured my brother had some stupid, noble reason like that.” Vex lets her eyes rest on the figure headed in their directions, slipping through the shadows towards the castle they stood upon. “Do you regret it?”

  
“Which part? How it ended or the fact that it happened at all?” Keyleth looks down at her hands and smiles. “I don’t think I regret either. After all, what ending could it have had? The thief and the princess. In fairy tales, it would have ended with a kiss or a maybe a wedding. But in fairy tales, they forget that the story continues after the kiss, that princesses have to rule, that what is easy in the beginning can’t continue to be.”

  
“The thief and the princess,” Vex muses. “You know, darling, that he never saw you that way.”

  
“But he never thought he was good enough.” Keyleth sighs, twining a strand of hair around a finger. “I love you twins dearly, but both of you have a chip on your shoulder when it comes to wealth, when it comes to courts and protocols. And even the Ashari , rustic as we are, have people with their noses in the air. Oh, both of you can sail your way through such crowds and smile while playing the role, but it grinds at you in a way that I couldn’t ask of him. I always thought that was why you…” She trails off, pressing her lips together as if she was embarrassed.

  
“Why I what?” Vex stares at her friend keenly, furrowing her brow. “Why I disapproved? Oh, darling, no. I’m a selfish thing, in the end and my brother is the thing I am most selfish about.” As Keyleth shook her head, Vex presses on, “No, I am, and protective of his heart more than my own, I’m afraid.”

  
“No, that’s not why I’m shaking my head. I mean, you aren’t selfish, of course, I don’t mean that. But I wasn’t going to say that. I was going to say why you never let yourself stay. Here, I mean.”

  
“Ah.” The pause is longer this time. “He never said anything. Nor did I. Oh, I knew how he felt. And I knew the offer he made to us all, at the end, of titles, of land in Whitestone whenever we wanted it, I knew it was mostly for me. You had your people. Pike had her temple to rebuild. Grog wouldn’t know what to do with a title unless it came with a ceremonial axe. Scanlan was allergic to anything that tied him down, with the possible exception of Kaylee. And my brother had his Goddess and her whispers to chase after.”

  
“But you said no.”

  
“I did. And it wasn’t the thought of polite society that kept me from it, nor leaving my brother to journey on alone. We wouldn’t have suited. We really did bring out the worst in each other, me feeding his antipathy towards society, him encouraging my recklessness. Both far too stubborn. We would have burnt each other out in our desire to prove the entire world wrong about ourselves.”

  
“And besides,” Vex’s throat starts to ache, a tear finally slipping down her cheek. “We still would have ended up here. He still would have grown old, I still would be standing here on this wall waiting for a funeral with more than half my life ahead of me. So what would be the point?”

  
“Happiness, perhaps.”

  
“Happily ever after. That’s how an adventure should end, I suppose. And we were. We are. We saved the world. We all lived. We all went back to the lives we were adventuring to save. That’s a happy ending.”

  
Keyleth steps next to her old friend and wraps an arm around her shoulder. “It is. I suppose it is.” Snow starts to fall, drifting down onto their shoulders as they stand quietly. A horn blows inside, calling them somewhere and they let it sound, holding on to each other before they face one more ending, in a string of more endings and beginnings than they could have envisioned those many years ago.


End file.
